Drunk on D'vine

At the moment of his fall, Noah was in the midst of rectifying the sin of Adam.

Noah, the man of the soil, debased himself and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and he uncovered himself with this tent. (Gen. 9:20-21)

Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yose [interpreted these verses respectively]:

One maintained that the grapevine was banished from the Garden of Eden.

[i.e. it was the Tree of Knowledge, according to one of the views cited (Bereishit Rabbah 15:8 and Sanhedrin70b)] and he planted it here [in the ground - outside of the Garden of Eden].

Noah intended to rectify the vine with which Adam had transgressed….

The other one maintains that the grapevine was from the Land of Israel, and he uprooted it and planted it [outside Israel].

On the same day [that he planted it], it produced fruits which he squeezed [to make wine].

He then drank the wine and became intoxicated.

According to the opinion that the vine was banished together with Adam from the Garden of Eden, Noah intended to rectify the vine with which Adam had transgressed. However, instead of sanctifying the wine which he made from the grapes, he became drunk on it. He thus debased himself by repeating Adam's sin, as explained below. The sin of the Tree of Knowledge was that Adam drank the juice which Eve squeezed from its grapes.

According to the second opinion, Noah found the vine outside of the Garden of Eden, in the Land of Israel. He debased himself by uprooting it from its proper place, and replanting it elsewhere, in a place that was not fitting for it. According to this view, his transgression was not the same as that of Adam. (Sulam)

Rabbi Shimon said: This verse contains the secret of wisdom. When Noah wished to examine the sin that Adam had committed with the intention of avoiding it himself and learning how to rectify it and the world, he was unable to [fathom its secret]. So he squeezed grapes in order to examine [the secret of] the vineyard.

The sons of Aaron…became intoxicated with the same wine which intoxicated Noah….

The Zohar states that Eve squeezed grapes from the Tree of Knowledge and gave Adam to drink. (Zohar I, 36a, 267b)Ziv Hazohar explains that this refers to "external" or secular wisdom, i.e. wisdom other than the Torah, such as philosophy, which attempts to examine divine secrets by way of the intellect; or witchcraft, which attempts to harness the powers of impurity.

When he reached this point, he became intoxicated and exposed, and he lost his resistance [to the External Forces].

Thus the breach in the world [which Adam's sin had made] became revealed, after it had been sealed [against the entry of External Forces (Ashmoret HaBoker)].

This is similar to [what happened with] the sons of Aaron, regarding whom we have learned [that they entered into the Holy of Holies] intoxicated with wine.

Now who gave them wine to drink there? Do you really think that they were so brazen as to drink wine there?

Certainly not! Rather they became intoxicated with the same wine [which intoxicated Noah].

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, also know by the acronym "Rashbi," lived in the Holy Land in the 2nd century C.E. A disciple of Rabbi Akiva, Rashbi played a key role in the transmission of Torah, both as an important Talmudic sage and as author of the Zohar, the most fundamental work of Kabbalah. He was buried in Meron, Israel, west of Safed.

Rabbi Moshe Miller was born in South
Africa and received his yeshivah education
in Israel and America. He is a prolific author and translator, with some twenty
books to his name on a wide variety of topics, including an authoritative,
annotated translation of the Zohar. He has developed a coaching-type approach to
dealing with life's issues based on Chassidism and Kabbalah—a tool for dealing
with normal issues that everyone faces as well as issues psychologists usually
address, often ineffectively. He also gives free live classes over the Internet.

The Zohar is a basic work of Kabbalah authored by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his students (2nd century CE). English translation of annotated selections by Rabbi Moshe Miller (Morristown, N.J.: Fiftieth Gate Publications, 2000) includes a detailed introduction covering the history and basic concepts of Kabbalah. Volume 1 (36 pp.) covers the first half of the first of the original’s three volumes. It is available online from our store, KabbalaOnline Shop.